Malarkey

Malarkey, Shirtless Paul Ryan and More Popular Searches and Trends in the Vice Presidential Debate

How old are the candidates? Why was Joe Biden laughing so much? And what is the meaning of the word malarkey? The Daily Beast rounds up the biggest searches and trends from the debate.

It’s no Big Bird , but malarkey proved to be the buzzword from the Joe Biden-Paul Ryan showdown in Danville, Kentucky on Thursday. The questions ran the gamut from foreign policy to the economy to abortion and even the candidates’ religion—but that’s not necessarily what generated the most comments on social media. From Paul Ryan apparently inspiring shirtless searches to Biden’s laughter, The Daily Beast rounds up the hot searches and Twitter trends from the “thrill in the ‘ville.

Top Rising Biden Searches
“Ryan debate”—Biden’s excitement seems to be what clinched his win.
“How old is”—Biden is 69 years old
“Laughing”—the Internet was so tickled by Biden’s constant giggles that it wasn’t long before someone put up a supercut.
“Jill”—Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife, has been stepping up her involvement in the campaign lately.

Top Rising Ryan Searches
“Biden debate”—Ryan may have (barely) lost, but he held his own.
“How old is”—Ryan likes to play up his age by talking about his hard-rock music tastes.
“Shirtless”—the true mark of a modern politician is apparently a good beach photo.
“Workout”—he’s really into P90X and can run a three— wait, four-hour marathon.

Four million tweets were sent about the debate. Of those 4 million, 26 percent were about foreign policy, 21 percent tackled the economy and 16 percent were on taxes.
· The top tweets-per-minute (TPM) were Biden’s dismissive "Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy” comment (58,275 TPM), Ryan saying that Democrats “got caught with their hand in the cookie jar turning Medicare into a piggy bank for Obamacare” (55,540) and Biden’s comments on the Afghan withdrawal timetable (54,944).
· She couldn’t compete with malarkey, but Martha Raddatz also held her own on Twitter. The debate moderator generated more than 30,000 tweets.